Introduction

Harry Potter and the Request for Help

Introduction

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By Luke Schierer

I have read a number of "Characters reading the books" fanfictions over the last two years, most of which get part way through book one and bog down, or at best, part way through books two or three before being abandoned. Overall the idea is a good one, but I rarely see Harry and Dumbledore reacting in believable ways. Typically all of a sudden Dumbledore is eager to make things right, and Harry becomes overly passive.

The two characters are probably the hardest to get right in this sort of endevour. Dumbledore is a man who genuinely thinks that secrets and sacrifices are necessary, and so he would dread a reading that will expose his secrets, and allow others to question the sacrifices he demands of Harry (and others). As an author, I will need to figure out if Dumbledore will try to stop this reading, or if he thinks there is a form of mass obliviation that would work to control and contain the information it releases. The idea that he would sit there without scheming is really untenable.

Harry would be torn between being mortified at the exposure, and rage at the injustice. I think that most authors are right that Minerva McGonagall, Molly Weasley, Severus Snape and (depending on if she is present) Delores Umbridge would have trouble differentiating past actions from future actions, and would have no trouble trying to hold Harry equally accountable for each. Moreover, Harry will feel put upon when he's lectured about mistakes he has already been punished for, thoughts he did not vocalize, and descriptions that he feels are true (but are disliked by those described). Harry hates to disappoint those he cares for, and he's been conditioned to take the blame for everything. On the other hand, as he grows older, especially in his fifth year when Riddle's influence via the scar is so strong, Harry's anger is also growing, and he will lash out against those who are proved, by the books, to have been unfair.

As I attempt this, if I am going to draw from a number of the previous attempts that I've read. Just as they have shamelessly created fanfiction from the original work, this is in a sense a fanfiction both of the Harry Potter series, but also of the "Reading the Books" attempts that come before me. I am not going to be successful at crediting each idea I might use as I use it, but I am going to keep [a listing of works that have inspired this one.

Perhaps the biggest question is where to start this endevour, part of me wants to start it after Harry finds out about the way that the girls in Ravenclaw hide Luna's things, but that is not until chapter 38 of the Order of the Phoenix1 which is really way too late. I think, for this to work, it would need to be, at the latest, around the time Umbridge is appointed High Inquisitor, but before the DA is started. Once the DA is started, Harry feels like he is doing something to fight back, he feels empowered, and would no longer have the need to call for the kind of help that would result in these books appearing.

A lot of authors have Umbrdige find the books to side step this, and certainly, she is stupid enough to launch an investigation based on the books without having read enough to realize they won't support her. Still, I dislike that, because by the end of the first book, she has already been proven wrong, and why would you continue to read? Maybe she and Fudge are so pig headed as to continue through to the second book, but that book makes Fudge look so bad that Amelia Bones should not need more to arrest him. By the end of the third book, Harry has Snape and Fudge looking really bad, Dumbledore in a really questionable position, and Sirius proven innocent. Both Dumbledore and Fudge really just want this whole thing to be done with at this point.

So really, the stories where the books are sent back with a spell to force a reading, or the books where some outside entity forces a reading to protect Harry make more sense. Something that Umbridge is forced into just as much as Dumbledore is allows those in charge to be increasingly upset but unable to stop. So naturally this is the path I will take. So what then would be Harry's lowest point at Hogwarts, where he feels least supported, and most powerless? I think it would have to be during the detentions with Umbridge, when Dumbledore is avoiding him and McGonagall is doing her "I cannot interfere with other teachers" routine. I mean really, what is the point of a head of house or a deputy headmaster if she can neither advocate for her students, nor reign in the staff's excesses?